May has brought summery weather to the North Country and reminds me of summers past. The rock-strewn beaches of Humarock, outside Boston, provided the backdrop to boyhood Junes and Julys.
Category: Massachusetts
Snow and Clear Air
Clear, cold winter air and a road stretching north from the Connecticut-Massachusetts border makes a lovely entrance to the Berkshires. A photogenic dusting of snow doesn’t hurt, either.
This is an example of perfect timing—as much as I like to take winter pictures, quadcopter drones like neither snow nor extremely low temperatures. Early in the season, however, there are lucky days like this one where snow is immediately followed by clear skies and above-freezing temperatures that give me a tiny window in which to capture the winter.
New England Summer
The passage of time and the seasons is a common theme on Decaseconds. As the Northeast struggles out of winter and into spring, I wanted to spotlight some fundamentally “summer in New England”-ish images.
Boston in early summer hasn’t yet become miserable and sweaty yet, and is instead a sea of crisp flags and bright flowers and blue skies. At Longwood Cricket Club, the New England of the twentieth century is preserved.
Inside that club, on the porch above the immaculate grass tennis courts, is the perfect place for a frosty chocolate milkshake and a buttery roll filled with lobster meat. New England prep at its finest.
And just outside Boston is Humarock, this charming seaside community of even more flags and sea grasses and ocean-smoothed rocks. The American flag has never looked so good.
Ariadne Turns 1
If I may digress from stark images of winter landscapes or warm seaside expanses for a moment to something more personal: I recently attended a birthday party for my one-year-old niece. The extended family was overjoyed, and she was a bit overwhelmed. In the landscape of warm woods and deep shadows and Persian rugs, the sense of “home” was overpowering. This was a place that could exist at almost any point in the past 150 years, somewhere in New England.
Ice Appears
Along the Mass Pike in central Massachusetts, early spring means massive walls of ice where the road cuts through hillsides. I really like the way this image is just a bit more cropped (largely because I was using a prime lens) than I might normally shoot the picture. Ice and rock FILLS the frame, with just a small amount of sky and trees on the left edge to provide a sense of scale.
Night Rain Reality
Blasting along the highway in an automotive capsule, awash in a rainy night of bokeh and wiper-blade motion. The glow of the dials and readouts and knobs and LCD panels and LED chargers just barely grace the driver’s arms and frame the hypnotic scene.
Guest Post: Pontoosuc Launch
Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Colin Hill.
Here is the boat lauch ramp on the shores of Lake Pontoosuc, just north of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Although spring has arrived and the sun takes longer to disappear behind the mountains in the distance, the water is still icy cold to the touch.
Guest Post: Uphill
Today’s post comes courtesy of Colin Hill.
The last hints of unseasonable spring snow grace the ground, and the gently curving roads of the Berkshires make an amateur racetrack for the teenagers of the town.
Guest Post: Stockbridge Bowl
Today’s post comes courtesy of Colin Hill.
This is a shot of Stockbridge Bowl in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was a relatively warm day, but the lake was still frozen over. I love the details in this picture: the huge cracks forming on the lake’s surface, the snow covered houses nestled into the hillside, the hills rolling off into the distance, all watched by the two tall pines in the foreground.
Guest Post: Leigh Valley Logging
Today’s post comes courtesy of Colin Hill.
While driving around Berkshire county testing out my new camera (which is in fact my brother’s old camera), I took a wrong turn and wound up on a small road sporting a recycling center and this small logging operation. In the background of this shot you can see train tracks which run parallel to the road and the edges of the October Mountain State Forest towering in the distance. In the foreground you can see lots of snow and logs stacked up like firewood for a giant’s furnace.
Follow the Lichen
New England has a lot of forest remaining. That might seem obvious, but in comparison to places like the UK (where millennia of human activity have annihilated most of the forests), it can be a bit startling.
Sand Fortress III
The Homestead
My grandfather’s farm in Sherborn, MA is perhaps the only unchanging place in my life. Since before I can remember, I’ve sat on this screen porch and looked out through the trees and fields. The flora and fauna of the homestead keep growing and multiplying, but it’s all kept in check.
The Grass Courts
The Longwood Cricket Club of Boston, MA no longer plays cricket. In fact, its members haven’t really played cricket for more than 100 years. What they do play is tennis, and they have acres of gorgeous grass courts on which to do so. On this particular day, as members relaxed on the front porch, the grass courts were empty. A massive storm the night before (that I also had a chance to photograph) meant that the courts were too wet. The view was perhaps all the more surreal for the juxtaposition of crowded porch and empty courts.
The Town Green
So much of New England looks like a post card, but I have to admit that this town green in Weston, MA is particularly charming. The whole concept seems idyllic: this enormous expanse of flawless grass, with an ancient stone wall on one side and a stand of trees on the other. The young family picnicking in the middle makes it perfect.
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